Introduction

Make a search of all the history books you can obtain. You will
find little, if any, mention of Captain Jack White after 1914. It is
as if the man who had proposed the formation of the Irish Citizen
Army had literally disappeared from the face of the earth when the
Dublin Lockout came to an end. In fact he lived on and remained
active in the socialist movement until 1940. When James Connolly was
sentenced to death it was White who rushed to South Wales and tried
to bring the miners out on strike in protest. For that he served
three months imprisonment. In England he worked for a time with
Sylvia Pankhurst's Workers Socialist Federation, and during the
General Strike of 1926 he wanted to organise a Citizen Army to
protect the picket lines as he had done in Dublin.

The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War saw White enlist with the
Irish International Brigadiers who went to fight fascism. A comrade
of his from the 1930's, Albert Meltzer, described White's experience
"He was thrilled with the collectivisation in Spain, and also with
the volunteer militias. He learned with amazement that this was the
work of the Anarchists. In addition to his work with the Irish
brigade at the front, he showed Spanish volunteer militia how to use
firearms, and also trained women in the villages on the way to
Saragossa in the use of small arms for defence. What, however, he
could not stomach was the fact that the Irish, like the rest of the
International Brigade, were being increasingly manipulated by the
Communist Party. He had never accepted the CP; he had just not seen
an alternative. Now he saw an alternative".

White offered his services to the CNT, giving up his International
Brigade membership. The CNT did not need foreign volunteers as they
had enough support at that time but they did need arms. They needed
people working for them outside Spain. He was asked to work for the
CNT in London, to raise badly needed funds and solidarity. During his
time in Spain he became a convinced Anarchist and shortly afterwards
wrote a pamphlet simply entitled The Meaning of Anarchism.

That this is new information to the reader indicates how history
can be falsified or even have whole episodes completely written out
of the history books. Much has been written to mark the 50th
anniversary to the Spanish Civil War but the contribution of the
Anarchists has been either totally ignored or reduced to a few
footnotes which were often composed of blatant lies or generalised
slander referring to 'wreckers'. To set the record straight this
pamphlet was produced. It is not a history of the Civil War, that
would require many hundreds of pages to do justice to the subject. It
is an uncovering of the "hidden history" of the Anarchist
participation in Spain's anti-fascist struggle.

It has not been written because of some academic interest but
because Anarchism is still as relevant now as it was fifty years ago.
We have seen the results of social democracy and it's Labour Parties,
we have seen what the Stalinists have done in Russia, China, Albania
and their satellites, we have seen how their left critics in the
Trotskyist movement have been unable to come to grips with the real
problem. And that real problem is the authoritarian idea that the
world can be changed over the heads of the workers. It can, but it
won't be much better.

Only Anarchism with its concept 'of socialism based on individual
freedom and the power of workers' councils stands apart from all
this. That is why, despite four decades of repression, the CNT
reappeared as a real union after the death of Franco. That is why a
group of Irish workers seeking a genuine socialism formed the Workers
Solidarity Movement in 1984. We believe that Anarchism is not just
another choice for those who want a better world, the history of all
other `left' movements shows that Anarchism is a necessity.